k~Blog

Gee, I hate it when something like this happens, when we have to listen to days of psychobabble, psycho-speak, and faulty second-guessing. But here it is again. Another case of it-shouldn't-have-happened-like-this.

Like the "Runaway Bride" case, we now collectively leap on the  "Stalking Astronaut" case, trying to figure out how this dreadful anomaly occurred.

Hey, it's not that hard to figure out. We occupy bodies during our time on earth. These bodies want stuff—things, approval, love, respect. Sometimes it's only make believe, a papermoon hanging over a cardboard sky. We fabricate fantasies, design scenarios with our compulsions at the very center. Most of these fantasies simply get washed away in the never-ending tide of the inner dialogue. Transitory thoughts. Here today, gone tomorrow. But sometimes they're so strong they take over our lives for a brief moment and we have to act them out. We just don’t want to believe this kind of thing could happen to someone who’s been through the official “vetting” process.

I’m not excusing her strange behavior, but face it, our bodies do have drives, impulses, needs and compulsions. Our bodies, their so-called needs and compulsions, can overpower our rational component and drive us to do unusual things from time to time. Things we later regret. Things we only do in temporary abnormal or altered states. States we end up excusing with, "I wasn't really myself last night." Well, what is "myself?" What is the state of "being myself?"

What gets me is how the most dignified media establishments feel obliged to play the circulation game and get down in the mud with supermarket weeklies. The New York Times, the talk shows, the Pundits, the columnists find themselves spinning the same sad platitudes which boil down to—there must be a glitch in the system for her to have slipped by. Now all we have to do is find it and correct it so this can never happen again. As if human behavior will somehow be rendered predictable as soon as this latest expert study is completed.

According to the Times, “NASA is reviewing its psychological screening and checkup process in the wake of the arrest of Capt. Lisa M. Nowak, the astronaut accused of attempted murder, space agency officials said yesterday. It will also try to determine whether “indications of concern” in Captain Nowak’s case were overlooked.”

It can’t be the fact that Captain Nowak’s just HUMAN. That can’t be it. That’s too easy an answer. If it were just that, then the same thing could happen to us. To me. And I wouldn’t like that. We wouldn’t like that—to be found out for who we are, mere human beings.

I’m sure that, wherever she is, Captain Nowak has probably returned to a “normal” state and is wondering how the hell she let her life get so out of control. Would it be any different if she had achieved some form of enlightenment, through meditation or Yogic practice? No one can say for sure. About the only thing we can say is: as long as we occupy bodies, we’re in for occasional surprises. Shouldn't we be able to control our impulses? Seek ways of perfecting our beings? It might seem so. But no one can reengineer our beings for us. We have to do it alone, all by ourselves.

Would anything have helped Lisa Nowak? Religtion? Mysticism? Prayer? Meditation? I don’t know. This is the real world, after all. So what can she do right now to get her life back together? For starters, pray that Anna Nicole Smith doesn't go away anytime soon. After that, who knows.

DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI is reviewed in February/March issue of The Sentient Times, a southern Oregon Newspaper for Personal and Community Transformation.

"DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI is a personal account of the author's experience with Kundalini awakening. His story begins with a childhood accident that robs him of his two most precious talents—singing and mathemetics—both of which he was particularly gifted in. After years of difficulty and frustration at not being able to achieve at his previous levels, he finds an obscure Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, which eventually leads him to discover the nature of his shortcomings and the path back to health."

Securing reviews for books like mine is a slow ardous task. First there's the general inertia. Next there's the natural resistance to self-published books: that a book the author's sending in by himself is probably either wordy or makes no sense at all. So how do you get magazines to look at a self-published book? I guess the answer is: One review at a time, and hope that the first one will snowball into second, a third, and so on.

The review ends with the following assessment, "With its empirical discussion of the physiological nature of Kundalini, DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI offers a fascinating look into this multi-dimensional phenomenon."

Thanks to Deborah Mokma, editor of The Sentient Times. She made the effort to read and analyse the book, and her review shows careful consideration of the issues.

Dr. Herbert Benson describes the Relaxation Response as a two-step process:

   1. Focusing the mind on a word, phrase, or sound.
   2. Passively disregarding interfering thoughts.

First of all, whether a meditation method contains two steps or two hundred, the purpose is to induce certain physiological changes. It really doesn't matter how many steps are involved because only a limited number of physiological changes can occur. Yet instead of judging a method by the number of its steps, we need first to understand the physiological changes a given method hopes to induce and how efficient that method is in inducing them. But since, as stated above, all methods produce the same changes, we have only to identify the changes to understand how meditation works and why some methods are more efficient than others. What are the changes?

The physical changes induced by meditation practice are:

   1. The development of systematic diaphragmatic breathing.
   2. The use of diaphragmatic breathing to control heart rate.

I will propose a third change in a moment, but first I want to discuss the two steps above. First of all, both steps require physical intervention on the part of the practitioner.

In Step One we encounter the notion of diaphragmatic breathing or the training of the diaphragm to regulate the breath. Unfortunately, since we cannot isolate or control the muscles of the diaphragm directly, we must find a "handle" that allows us to do so indirectly. That handle is the belly or abdominal muscles.

If we extend the belly to pull in air on inhalation and push the belly in to expel air, we are embarking on a regimen of abdominal and diaphragmatic calisthenics. Starting this activity for the first time—whether sitting, walking, or lying down—we are likely to feel a burning sensation. That is the muscles—the abdomen and diaphragm—telling us we are doing it correctly. Using the belly muscles is like pump-priming, i.e., using the handle of a pump (the belly) to activate the pump mechanism (the diaphragm).

Step Two uses the acquired diaphragmatic breathing skill as a means of slowing down the heart rate, which has the effect of relaxing the body, hence the achieved goal of the Relaxation Response. Again, since we cannot influence or control the heart rate directly, we use a subterfuge or "handle" to accomplish it—in this instance, our recently acquired diaphragmatic breathing capability. We use it to regulate the heart rate.

What do I mean by regulate? Regulate means to make deeper and more rhythmic. And because we’ve acquired the diaphragmatic breathing skill, we can now take in more air during each breath cycle. So how does this work? Shallow breathing merely fills the lungs. Deep breathing fills the lungs, the diaphragm, even pockets behind the kidneys. With diaphragmatic breathing we not only take in more air, we slow down the inhalation–exhalation cycle to the point where breathing is entirely silent. THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says, “Only the heart must be conscious of the flowing in and out of the breath; it must not be heard with the ears.” Like the diaphragm, the heart is a muscle we cannot isolate or control directly. Once again we use a “handle” to control the heart (the source of emotion). As THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER says, “The heart cannot be influenced directly. Therefore, the breath-energy is used as a handle." Another take on this issue can be found in this post.

No matter the name of the method, these two steps, and the physiological effects wrought by mastering them, are found in each and every serious meditation method. The particular genius of Dr. Benson lies as much in his packaging and marketing approach as it does in the actual method.

By styling the Relaxation Response as a means of promoting stress reduction and worker productivity and by borrowing techniques from Transcendental Meditation and other Eastern meditation methods and repurposing them, Dr. Benson discovered a creative way of popularizing meditation.

In a sense, the most difficult aspect of meditation is not covered in the two-step active physical intervention process mentioned above. However, most teachers, including Dr. Benson devote lots of time to it. In fact, Dr. Benson identifies it as his second step: "Passively disregarding interfering thoughts."

As opposed to the aforementioned "physical intervention processes" this process is defined by many, including Dr. Benson, as a passive process. He says so in the wording of his second step: "Passively disregarding interfering thoughts." It boils down to finding a means of calming mental activity during meditation. Its many names include the Taoist expression "the ten-thousand things" and others like the inner dialogue, monkey chatter—all the crazy, run away mental activity that stifles our daily lives, and interferes with meditation.

But it is very difficult to control the mind directly; almost impossible to tell the mind to just "shut up" or try what Dr. Benson calls "passive disregarding." Once again, we need a kind of subterfuge or "handle" to stop the mind from running away. Each teacher has his own approach. Yet frequently the discussion over the best approach devolves into acrimony. I recommend active approaches to "handling" the 10,000 things. They are an attempt to "sidestep" the mind by ignoring it or giving it something banal to do.

The first is counting the breath in a series of four beats: inhale-four, hold-four, exhale-four, hold-four. Start over. This activity occupies the mind just enough to forestall the 10,000 things. Some practitioners have even found that the counting drops away of its own accord after a while.

The second approach entails walking, that is, timing the breath cycle over a given number of strides. inhale-four steps, hold-four steps, exhale-four steps, hold-four steps. Start over. In this case, the activity of walking and counting occupies the mind, especially if the practitioner lets himself become involved with the sights and sound of nature, thereby becoming less mindful of the psychic burdens of life and more mindful of nature.

Now for the third step and the physical change it produces. Adding this next step takes the meditation process "Beyond the Relaxation Response." It involves implementing “the backward-flowing method.”

My familiarity with the “the backward-flowing method” stems from my extensive first-hand experience with Taoist meditation, all detailed in my book DAIRY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI. Written in narrative form, the book describes how I was given a copy of THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER by a stranger in Paris during the early 1970s.

I put this book away for over a year. Then one day, as my life began to spin out of control, I started reading the book and meditating. At first, I didn't understand it. Slowly, however, I began to "figure out" what to do.

I became so involved in the meditation that I left Paris to live in a small village in the south of France. The experience was really one day, one page at a time; I didn't know what to expect, had no idea there would be such an significant outcome. I had never heard of Kundalini. This was 1972. And Gopi Krishna's book wasn't available yet, not in my tiny French village, that is.

Page by page I worked my way through THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER until one day, while meditating, I noticed something different in my breathing. In my book, I describe the moment thusly:

“Observing my breath as I sit one morning, I am aware that it has the property of direction. At each inhalation the hitherto imperceptible wind in my belly appears to eddy slightly at the bottom of my abdomen as it descends, before taking an upward circular course. Or so it appears to me. Down the back, then up the front, in a circular motion.

"Something clicks. I remember the words ‘backward-flowing method’ in THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. Words I passed over a hundred times, never having a clue as to what they meant, never imagining they might be important. I break off to look for the passage. In two quick flips, I‘ve located the text, ‘At this time one works at the energy with the purpose of making it flow backward and rise, flow down to fall like the upward spinning of the sun-wheel…in this way one succeeds in bringing the true energy to its original place. This is the backward-flowing method.’”

Yes, diaphragmatic breathing is the key to stabilizing the heart rate, but the key to causing the energy to flow upward to the brain is the ‘backward-flowing method.’ Again it works like pump-priming, that is, reversing the direction of the breath begins the process of drawing the seminal fluid up the spinal column. This passage from my book describes what happened after I reversed my breath:

“I visualize a plumb-line and close my eyes. I command the breath to change direction and it obeys. I am elated at receiving confirmation from the book. What I don’t yet realize is that this is the last time I will direct the meditation process. From now on I am on automatic pilot. I remember the words of Ram Dass: At first, you do it; later, it does you. Action to attain non-action.

”For a week I observe my breath circulate in the opposite direction without noticing any effect. I go back to my uninspired routine: walking, cooking, meditating. Then, two weeks later, about the length of time it takes the backward-flowing process to become permanent, there’s something new. On the day in question, I feel a sensation at the base of my spine like the cracking of a small egg and the spilling out of its contents. For the next month, I observe the fluid-like contents of the egg trickle out of its reservoir and slowly begin to climb my spine. What is this fluid? I can’t describe it exactly. It seems to emanate from the base of the spine and press upward. Each time I sit to meditate it has risen a half an inch higher.”

I believe—and I discuss it in detail in my book—that THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER contains the safest, most reliable method of taking one's meditation practice beyond the Relaxation Response, so much so that for contemporary practice I have added the third step, modernized it into a method I call RESTORATIVE MEDITATION.

The ‘backward-flowing method’ is the key to making it all work. And it’s a big step to consider because there’s no turning back. I got confirmation on this fact first hand, for shortly after I willed my breath to change directions, the Kundalini activation process began. Yes, there were glitches, but overall using THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER to activate my Kundalini has been a restorative process—physically, mentally, spiritually. And I believe it can be so for others. Learn more about the healing power of RESTORATIVE MEDITATION.

When I met with him in Kashmir during the summer of 1977, Gopi Krishna termed my experience, “One of the most far-reaching, permanent Kundalini awakenings I’ve encountered. Rare, very rare, indeed.” I ascribe my positive results in activating the restorative powers of Kundalini to THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.

Adding this one simple step to the two-step Relaxation Response process wakes up the hidden powers of Kundalini and primes the body for restoration and renewal.

1. The development of systematic diaphragmatic breathing.
2. The use of diaphragmatic breathing to control heart rate.
3. The moment you detect the property of movement, change the direction of your breath.

I met Gopi Krishna in 1977 while visiting Kashmir. Was it a defining moment? I'm not sure I believe in a single defining moment that clears up the confusion of a lifetime. Most of my defining moments have been food for thought. I've had to chew on them before using them as catalysts to change self-destructive behavior. In this case, I mostly listened as Gopi Krishna rattled off a list of the "dos and don'ts" of living with Kundalini. After describing my own Kundalini experience, we talked about sex & sublimation, diet, the stress of working, travel, handling illness, and exercise.

To many this might seem like a superficial conversation, not particularly useful for someone who'd just activated his Kundalini. However, I appreciated his sticking to basics and not running a lot of 'spiritual' smack on me. I had no preconceptions about our meeting; I didn't know if he'd be telling me about visions or secret powers—or just plain ole practical living. It turned out to be the latter, and over time I've been grateful because that's the kind of empirical knowledge that matters when learning to deal with Kundalini.

Gopi Krishna was the first person I'd met who didn't discuss Kundalini in generalities. He stuck to practicalities. Does this mean there was something missing in his understanding of the spiritual aspects of Kundalini? No, it means that perhaps something's been wrong with the classification of Kundalini as a spiritual phenomenon. There's a more practical aspect to Kundalini; namely its healing capabilities.

In fact, Gopi Krishna was the first person to get me thinking beyond the widely varied and difficult to define spiritual aspects of Kundalini, notions such as "higher consciousness" and "enlightenment." He got me wondering what these terms really mean. Do they mean the same thing to everyone? My confusion only grew when I discussed these terms with others and watched their eyes glazing over. So I began to doubt these terms had any shared meaning. I realized that although I was unable to discuss "higher consciousness" or "enlightenment" with other people, I was able to describe the healing powers of Kundalini in clear, specific terms. This led me to think of meditation as a scientific experiment, and Kundalini as the result of an experiment performed in the laboratory of the body. The light didn't shine immediately, but one of Gopi Krishna's statements got me to thinking about meditation as a type of scientific experiment. “For you," he said, "learning what to eat and how to live with Kundalini is crucial. Don’t listen to people’s opinions on spiritual matters. Learn as much as possible about your true nature, about your body. These secret functions of the body are part of a science, you know. An ancient one, but still valid.”

Over time, I began to realize that meditation produces changes in the body just like scientific experiments produce changes in the material world. These changes may be realtively minor, like the Relaxation Response, or they may be considerable, like those wrought by Kundalini. But whether are the result of the Relaxation Response or of Kundalini meditation, they are definitely physiological. In my case, improving the state of my health and restoring the vigor of my body.

And then I wondered: If I could do it, if it worked for me, would it work for others, too? Was the Kundalini meditation process I used scientifically valid? Absolutely—as long as the results are consistent over a given number of subjects. To me that means activating Kundalini in a safe, reliable, and consistent manner.

So since our 1977 meeting, that's what I've been concentrating on: the scientific aspects of meditation and the healing capabilities of Kundalini. Kundalini, the ancient, but still valid science Gopi Krishna spoke to me about.

DIARY OF A CONNECTICUT YOGI contains a full account of my meeting with Gopi Krishna and describes my method of scientific meditation for safe, permanent and reliable Kundalini activation.

To my mind there are three mandatory works for the student of Kundalini. And they are, in chronological order: The Secret of the Golden Flower (800AD), Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man (1971), Diary of a Connecticut Yogi (2006).

By including my own book in this list, I realize I may be accused of being "self-serving." Aside from the fact that everyone is self-serving to some degree, there are reasons for my doing so. First, there's a common theme to what Gopi Krishna called "permanent' awakenings in these books. Second, there's a continuity between the life experience of each one of the authors, both before during, and after awakening. The notion of setting down secret information in a book pervades The Secret of the Golden Flower. Witness this quote at the end of The Book of Consciousness and Life, "Herewith I have betrayed the deepest secret of the Leng-yen in order to teach disciples. He who receives this way rises at once to the dark secret and no longer becomes submerged in the dust of everday life." It's clear here that this 9th century writer feels he's doing something forbidden. He's probably referring to the act of codifying these secrets in a book, instead of letting them be passed on in the traditional manner by teachers and gurus.

It's all the more interesting when you consider that both Gopi Krishna and myself never found adequate teachers. In fact, we never found any one at all who could speak with more authority or knowledge than that which we had acquired during our solitary awakenings. When I read the following passage in Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man shortly after my own awakening, I decided to forego any serious pursuit of a teacher. If Gopi Krishna had tried and failed in India, what was the point of my trying? "I consulted other holy men and sought for guidance from many reputed quarters without coming across a single individual who could boldly assert that he actually possessed intimate knowledge of the condition and could confidently answer my questions."

Then there's the actual similarity of our processes. I got mine directly from The Secret of the Golden Flower. And it turned out to be first-rate. Imagine that! A book over twelve hundred years old and its information is smack up to date.

Feeling like, through this book, I'd somehow inherited this wealth of forbidden wisdom, I was obliged to plunge ahead on my own. Stumbling from disappointment to failure, searching for answers, a book given to me by a stranger, retreat to the country, decoding and understanding the text, discovery of the "backward-flowing method," sublimation of the seminal fluid, the magic elixir of life and the healing wind. This was my path—going off on my own to discover and experience Kundalini first hand. And like Gopi Krishna, an eventual return to the real world. Waiting years before feeling up to the task of writing about Kundalini, always living between two worlds, never comfortable in either.

Contrary to 1972 when I had my awakening, there are now many books on Kundalini; none like the three listed above. If you know of one that belongs on this list, please let me know. I'd love to read it.